Within You Without You

rdf:langString Within You Without You

rdf:langString Within You Without You

rdf:langString Within You Without You

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rdf:langString Cover of the Northern Songs sheet music

rdf:langString Indian classical, raga rock

rdf:langString George has done a great Indian one. We came along one night and he had about 400 Indian fellas playing there ... it was a great swinging evening, as they say.

rdf:langString Sgt. Peppers "Within You, Without You" exemplified the transformation – a transfusion of Indian melody and instrumentation that captured the zeitgeist of millions of freaky young 'uns sitting around discussing consciousness. Needless to say, sitar sales skyrocketed, as did the demand for gurus.

rdf:langString Harrison's Māyan discourse [in "Within You Without You"] establishes the firmament for the Beatles' utopian sentiments that ultimately propel the Summer of Love into being: "With our love we could save the world," Harrison sings.

rdf:langString "Within You Without You" was a song that I wrote based upon a piece of music of Ravi [Shankar]'s that he'd recorded for All-India Radio. It was a very long piece – maybe thirty or forty minutes ... I wrote a mini version of it, using sounds similar to those I'd discovered on his piece.

rdf:langString – George Harrison discussing the composition in 2000

rdf:langString – John Lennon recalling the recording of "Within You Without You", 1967

rdf:langString – Kenneth Womack, 2014

rdf:langString – Michael Simmons, Mojo, 2011

rdf:langString EMI, London

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rdf:langString "Within You Without You" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Written by lead guitarist George Harrison, it was his second composition in the Indian classical style, after "Love You To", and inspired by his stay in India in late 1966 with his mentor and sitar teacher Ravi Shankar. Recorded in London without the other Beatles, it features Indian instrumentation such as sitar, tambura, dilruba and tabla, and was performed by Harrison and members of the Asian Music Circle. The recording marked a significant departure from the Beatles' previous work; musically, it evokes the Indian devotional tradition, while the overtly spiritual quality of the lyrics reflects Harrison's absorption in Hindu philosophy and the teachings of the Vedas. The song was Harrison's only composition on Sgt. Pepper, although his endorsement of Indian culture was further reflected in the inclusion of yogis such as Paramahansa Yogananda among the crowd depicted on the album's cover. With the worldwide success of the album, "Within You Without You" presented Indian classical music to a new audience in the West and contributed to the genre's peak in international popularity. It also influenced the philosophical direction of many of Harrison's peers during an era of utopian idealism marked by the Summer of Love. The song has traditionally received a varied response from music critics, some of whom find it lacklustre and pretentious, while others admire its musical authenticity and consider its message to be the most meaningful on Sgt. Pepper. Writing for Rolling Stone, David Fricke described the track as "at once beautiful and severe, a magnetic sermon about materialism and communal responsibility in the middle of a record devoted to gentle Technicolor anarchy". For the Beatles' 2006 remix album Love, the song was mixed with the John Lennon-written "Tomorrow Never Knows", creating what some reviewers consider to be that project's most successful mashup. Sonic Youth, Rainer Ptacek, Oasis, Patti Smith, Cheap Trick and the Flaming Lips are among the artists who have covered "Within You Without You".